Hi All!

This month we've been working on getting all the assets together ready for the the next scene, which is Sombra's Finale, her turn in the 'high yield' or 'intensive stimulation' centre.

This scene had been concepted/planned for some time, an inevitability really of the pseudo-storyline that 'The Box' series has been headed to, I figure I can't really set up sequels like I have that I'm not prepared to see through!

So whereas I had some idea of what I wanted to do in this scene, it usually takes some input/dedication from one of us to finalise and massage the idea into something worth developing.

Now luckily, with INOPRBL joining our staff full time, this is a job I can mostly leave to him now, and in an ideal circumstance once I reach the end of a production everything is set up and ready for me to sit down and start animating.

Over the years I've gotten better about making sure that things are lined up in a way that reduces, as much as possible this period of 'dead air' between productions. Stuff like ordering the voice work ahead of starting, using stand in or proxy ideas of the scene before the final models are complete (it's how I worked with the last scene)

For most of that production I was working with my own set of proxy mesh's, and only lit the environment once I had the final completed assets.

I can get a fair amount done without the whole scene but there's an acceptable minimum that's needed really for me to work within, it's pretty hard to get an idea of how to pace the scene if all you have is your model sat floating in a blank space!

In this case, since we've only just freed INOPRBL from the shackles of full time employment so he can focus on this work full time, we're still dealing with a little lag as he catches up, as good as the guy is, asset design and development is a very time intensive process, and is only becoming more intensive as our standards soar higher.

With all that said, I have a few looks at how this idea formed up over the last month:

This was my original concept for the scene, I knew I wanted her suspended from the ceiling (a pose that's been requested a fair bit in the past) and I knew it was going to be -intensive- milking, so we knew we needed to bring it.

So I sent that off to INOPRBL and I'll show you the concept he came back with in a moment, but there was a lot more details to establish between then and now.

We talked about the important bits, IE how she was going to be stimulated, those being, in our opinion, some of the most important aspects of our scenes, a milking scene needs a good milker!

Designing a good milker is always a struggle between wanting to show the details and mechanics of the device, whilst not obstructing too much of the view. 

There's shortcuts that some people will take like, X-ray, which I'm not totally opposed to, but not yet found an implementation I can be absolutely happy with. I like my scenes to exist as grounded as possible, the idea being you can image that what we show is a window into the happenings of the universe, that what you see -could- exist.

So when people say 'do x ray!' my thought process usually goes along the lines of:

-OOh x-ray that would look cool! But how is this image produced?

-Is this a literal bone x-ray? in which case what's the resolution? what's the technology involved? Why would they -want- an x-ray of them? what is there to gain from it? Is it for monitoring purposes? How often is the image taken? What are the accommodations made to ensure the person being x-rayed isn't subjected to significant levels of ionising radiation? Maybe it's a cat scan technology? But that only works when the subject is perfectly still.. Well maybe at this point they're more advanced? But why dedicate that resource to this circumstance? If the image is being produced, why is it being overlayed into what we see through this 'camera?'

So yeah I've thought about x-ray, and we've not yet arrived at a satisfactory set of rules around it to use it.

However, we did come across a couple ideas that allowed us to accomplish the original goal, that being: Show a stimulating device without covering up too much of the subject. Those two technologies were soft robotics and quantum locking.

Enter milker concept:

We wanted a 'chamber' design for the tip, the idea here was a set of quantum locked magnets that would enable the device to expand and capture the genitals and move along them.

We took inspiration from the movements of Jellyfish when discussing how it might move, using the implication of expanding air channels and sacks to control itself without having to require bulky pistons, hinges or hard 'traditional' robotics.

The balls were also another area that is important to stimulate, but difficult to do visually, whilst INOPRBL iterated through the scene layout ideas I was considering how to adequately massage them for their yield, the above concept had us imagining a bag enclosing them, and that idea seemed fun, but a little basic.

It became clear at this stage that, more ideas are always better, so I dusted off blender to start messing with some ideas myself.

This was idea 1 following along with the bag plus cables route, some kind of badge to contain them. It looked alright but not what felt 'right' for this scene. We wanted a device that looked like it could give em a good 'tug'

Enter iteration 2 of the ball squeezulator, complete with some basic animation to demonstrate the idea at play.

I was a lot happier with this, but the hard connections were interfering with the concept of 'visually free' that we were going for.

This was not the final design we went with but this was playing along with the concept of us using quantum locking to control and position the device.

In the mean time, INOPRBL came back with an update on some scene design and had a preview for me:

Humbling skill gap aside, this made me realise a hard truth, I really needed to learn how to sculpt!

In the time It had taken me to iterate through 2-3 ideas of one device, he'd fleshed out a wonderfully detailed (still sculpt level resolution) scene idea, it was clear my method of box modelling my machine ideas had to change.

In the time I spent reeling over this he'd already put together a rough concept for the milker, I knew I had to do something to start filling it in.

The milker design was a fun one but not something I was 100% happy with, it didn't feel like it had enough that was playing with her. This scene is supposed to be a bit 'edge-ey' so I picked up the stylus and started to sculpt out some ideas.

This update is starting to get kind of long so I'll spare you the weeks of iterations that brought me to where we arrived today, materials and technical design aside, this is where I landed with how we wanted the milking bits to work.

Spurned on which just how rapidly sculpting allowed me to iterate through ideas I turned my attention to some of the other parts:

So back to the title of the post: Pipeline.

As it sounds, it's meant to be a representation of the path that a production takes from concept to finalisation.

I've mentioned before that we're taking steps to reduce this downtime, our plan as it stands at the moment is, once the assets for this scene are finished, INOPRBL can begin concepting and finishing the assets for the next. 

A lot of what I've made so far over the years has been abandoned mostly never to be used again, due to a poor standard of rigging, or just a low quality or poorly realised idea.

I feel we're getting to the point now where the assets we make, are the ones we keep, and can therefore reuse! We're also taking a much more modular approach to how we build scenes. 

Our hope being that, when it comes to moving between projects, it's not going to be a case of spending a couple months waiting for a coherent image to form, and is simply a case of sitting down and getting to work!

It's been a long road so far, and it's got a bit more to go before things run quite as smoothly as we'd like, but the continued support from you all is ensuring that, at least for now, this remains possible, We are ever fortunate to have such a dedicated fan base.

For those of you not quite up to date or, perhaps haven't seen my earlier works, either through preference or otherwise, this whole endeavour started with a very narratively driven, POV style sequential series.

It was the original Arc that I wrote that this whole universe was formed around, and I've gone back and fourth on revisiting it for a good amount of time now.

So much so that long standing members of the community have noticed, most amusingly to the point of making meme's about it:

I wanted to revisit this 'officially' I've mentioned it a few times in passing comments and replies on discord and such. 

I have not forgotten about poor A414, he will be returned to, however in the time between his visits, the standards of the productions we put out has risen so sharply, It would be a significant step back for me to use the assets, models and such that I had in place when I originally wrote and animated EP5.

I can't, in all good conscience, at least with my own sense of moral integrity, release something of that standard and claim it's the best we can do right now.

The story and the arc contained within are very important to me, and it deserves to be realised in the best way we possibly can do it.

With the arc containing a lot of strong character moments, a reliance on non erotic segments, and the establishment of an understanding of the universe itself, along with it being a delivery method for a lot of the exposition we want to deliver, having seen the potential we now have with the extra staff involved, it wouldn't be right to proceed with it until we're ready.

The main foundation I'm waiting for is the finalisation of our in house -do everything- base mesh that our technical director has been slaving away at for the past 5-6 months, it's something we're going to close back in on, but we're just not there yet.

I want to see him back too, but I can't say when it will be as the constituent parts cannot, and should not, be rushed.

Another massive thank you to all my supporters for the continued dedication and patience.

More news as it comes, bye for now!

Hiyo All!

So nothing really to -show- as such at the moment all major assets are in heavy development and subject to such significant change that anything I show you would not be even remotely close to representative of what it's going to look like: this is just going to be me talking atcha for the most part.

The next scene, which is going to be Sombra's ultimate fate, is in the concepting and development stage currently, as most of you know by now I like to take a little time off between projects as they can be very draining! (much like her experience will be)

This didn't take the entire month though, so I've spent some time recently addressing some tasks that have been long overdue, this took the form of a lot of admin, some server re-building, some network re-organising, some accounting, and most significantly, the addition of a full time member to the team!

That member being INOPRBL, the modelling and concepting genius behind most of the set in the last piece.

Whereas INOPRBL has been in the side-lines, pretty much from the beginning, as a friend, consultant, and occasional supplier of assets, his involvement has always been limited by the fact that he has to work his full time job, assets take a lot of time to make, and even being as passionate an individual as he is (as are all the people I like to work with) there are only so many hours in the day!

Well, now he's working with us! Or at least is in the transitional phase or transfer to employment. (that is one of the admin jobs I've been working on over the last couple weeks)

This is going to represent a significant shift in our ability to produce consistently higher standards of work in shorter periods of time, as one of the greatest bottlenecks we have here (as with most 3D productions) is asset design and creation.

I mean the guy managed to produce a scene of such quality whilst managing a 50 hour work week, think about what he's going to be able to do now!

The down to the bolts detail of how this all webs together is, honestly kind of mundane, it's a lot of pipeline talk, optimisation of workflows, I'll likely get into the details of our evolving pipeline in another update I expect, but the takeaway should be that, this is yet another step we're taking to up the quality and production timescales in a big way!

And it is thanks to all of you that this is possible! All of your continued generosity is, as of this moment, providing gainful and rewarding employment to 3 permanent people, and numerous other contract workers.

It's incredibly exciting (and also kind of scary) to be at the centre of this developing business, I hope we will continue to surprise and delight you with an ever increasing dedication to quality erotic entertainment!

More news as it comes, bye for now!

Greetings!

TLDR: The Kiri episode is rendering as I type, by the numbers it will be doing so for the next 4 days, allowing me a couple days to do my post processing and final touches, this should drop sometime next week (I'm aiming for Thursday) 

With that said, I wanted to talk today about where all your money ends up!

Believe it or not, I'm not actually buying a yacht with it!

This project represents the first true 'all hands on deck' situation for me, It's the first time that an entire production has started with, and been worked through by multiple members.

So along with paying the growing team of passionate individuals (all of which are equally as excited to see this vision rendered) a lot of it gets spent on hardware.

New computers, graphics cards, hard drives, that kind of thing, I'm going to explain why this is so helpful, by talking about cum!

I spent about 2 weeks of this month running fluid simulations for this scene, When I said before that you should all expect a scene like Mercy X Aimee but messier, I meant it!

That sounds like a lot of time, and it is! But when you consider I was using a whole new system which I had to learn the ins and outs of... well.. it's still a lot of time! 

But honestly, that's just simulation in general, it is a tedious, yet necessary part of productions.

And when I say tedious, I mean tedious, below is an example of a FLIP simulation baking in real time:

Just so you can understand the numbers here:

This is a system I've been using for many years now, a lot of the fluid dynamics in a lot of my productions were made using it, so I'm pretty good at it at this point, I've had a lot of practice. 

But even with that level of experience, a simulation will almost never turn out well on the first try, you almost always have something to tweak to get it to look right.

So suffice to say, considering some of the simulations in this scene go on for thousands of frames, this was not going to work.

I like to think I have an extremely patient supporter base, but I think even you guys would get upset if I told you all I'd be waiting another 2 months on this project! (I did not pull that number out of the air, it's literally how long it would have taken)

So, things had to change. Enter fluid particles. By comparison this is a much larger scale simulation running, with 10 times the particles, on 20x the scale:

Awesome right!? But this is simulation, Simulations still go wrong.

They go wrong a lot

So, you're always going to have to iterate, and at the length of time this sim goes on for, it was taking about an hour to an hour and a half to see the results of each sim.

The solution? run 3 iterations of the simulation with different values at the same time, across a networked set of computers:

You'll notice those move a lot slower, it got a bit more complex as time went on!

In the end, in a single week, I was able to complete something in the region of 150-200 iterations of the simulation until I found the settings that produced the result I wanted

Well, actually the result I wanted was Version 47, but I ran about another 20 after that just to see if it could be made any better.

Overall, the fluid particle system was a wonderful addition to my arsenal, and the time I've managed to turn this project around in is a reflection of the level of investment that's brought us this far

Without the support of you all, I would never have been able to afford all the devices that make this kind of stuff possible!

It is my hope that, if this continues, we can only continue to make better and greater things. As competent as this system is, I have made contacts that are going to enable me to start using Houdini for my simulation needs, and then we're going to see stuff on another level entirely!

With that said though, this production really is on another level from my previous works, we are finally starting to see the return of the investment that I've been building on for the past few years!

Another decision which, may not have been as popular is, This production could have actually been done and released by now, the timing was such that it did have an, albeit slim, possibility of coming in just under the wire.

What ended up costing us was the addition of volumetric lighting, It is a very good looking, but also very costly addition to the rendering process.

Just to put it in perspective, these are frames from different stages of the animation, all of them are to be considered WIP (even the one at the top of this post)

This was the first lighting setup I was going to go with for this production, at this stage this would render in about a minute per frame (17,175 frames, 3 computers = about 4 days)

I got some feedback that the light direction was a little boring, so I twisted it a little, messed with the range and added some cut-out sections of it, at this stage it's still taking about a minute per frame.

Then volumetrics came about, speak to any 3d artist and they will know that volume is an extremely costly, but also extremely beneficial addition to how real a scene feels. Just this level added 30 seconds of render time -minimum- to each frame (that makes the render take 6 days instead)

Nice right? But we can do better here at MJP.

This final adjustment, along with some additional tweaks pushed the final average frame render time to 2 minutes per frame (8 days rendering total)

Soooo yeah, that's why I missed my deadline at the end of last month, I think the results speak for themselves though.

But I said 4 days at the top? how come it's going to be done that soon if it was going to be rendering twice as long?

Well, I bought another GPU, another thing I was able to do, because I have so many of you supporting us. 

If I'm being honest though, I made a lot of similar decisions during the production of this piece. 

The whole, get content out fast VS realising your own vision of the scene debate is one that will run through the minds of any independent artist living upon the whim of thousands of generous strangers.

It is taking a measured approach, and spending the extra time that resulted in the production looking the way it does now, and I sincerely believe that, that's why you're all here, to see the finest quality pornography that exists.

Until I release my next piece of course!

I leave you with an image of some frames in motion from the animation.

Please bear in mind this is a screen recording/crop of a small section of the frame before any final post processing, it is also a GIF which are low frame rates, the final production moves as smoothly as any of my others do:

Bye for now!